 30 October, 2021 Hello, "Why Rishi will win" was the headline on a breathless, rhapsodic piece in UnHerd on the day of the Budget. "Where Boris is shambolic, Rishi is spruce. Boris looks necrotic, Rishi simply gleams. We know Boris is a rake; Rishi is fanatically uxorious. Boris is all appetites: embarrassingly lardy. But Rishi is all discipline, Peloton-ed every morning." And yes, we must agree: for the moment at least, there's no doubt the Chancellor carries all before him. Will it last? I doubt it: heirs apparent rarely make it to the top in British politics, as Sunak knows all too well. But having made a tidy fortune himself, and married a woman richer than the Queen, he at least has plenty to fall back on if it all goes pear-shaped. (See Moneymakers in this week's issue). All good wishes,
Jon Connell Editor-in-chief
The metaverse  Zuckerberg's vision of the future "For the first time in 17 years, Mark Zuckerberg has a new job," says Alex Heath in The Verge. On Thursday he became CEO and chairman of Meta, a new parent company for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and every other whizzy wing of his sprawling technology conglomerate. The next step is building what he calls the "metaverse" – an idea being talked up as nothing short of a successor to the internet. Zuck thinks that by 2030 most people will be spending time in a fully immersive 3D version of the web. He's pushing his teams to build technology (like Oculus's virtual reality headsets) that will let you "show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar" or appear as a hologram in your friend's living room, anywhere on the planet. This is a "billion-dollar opportunity", says Hirsh Chitkara in Protocol. Zuckerberg wants the metaverse to seem so real that people will spend "every day" there – unlocking an entirely new economy of virtual goods and services. Crypto technology will play "a pretty important role". And Zuck is planning to sell things such as "digital clothes". This isn't as bonkers as it sounds. Fortnite, the wildly popular Gen Z videogame, generates nearly $5bn a year by doing something similar, selling "skins" for its in-game avatars. Teens love it. It's something I've "wanted to build since even before I started Facebook", Zuckerberg told investors on Monday. He sees it as the "holy grail of online social experiences". It's "absurd but telling" that the inspiration for the metaverse was meant as satire, says Ian Bogost in The Atlantic. In Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash, which coined the term, the "alternate-reality dreamworld" comes across as dangerous. And it is. Zuckerberg "has embraced the premise of The Matrix, that we can plug ourselves into a big computer and persist as flesh husks while reality decays around us". Meta is from the Greek for "above or beyond something else". In Hebrew it means death. The sad truth is that tech billionaires are "giving up" on saving this world. Whether it's in space or cyberspace, they're hellbent on dominating the next.
Love etc  A Taiwanese maths teacher has found an unconventional online teaching platform, says Ian Lecklitner in Mel magazine – the adult website Pornhub. Changhsu, as he's known, doesn't do anything pornographic. The bespectacled 34-year-old simply stands, fully dressed, in front of a blackboard, speaking in a steady stream of Mandarin as he unpicks the complexities of calculus. A banner above his Pornhub page reads: "Play hard, study hard." "Very few people teach math on adult video platforms," says Changhsu. "And since there are so many people who watch videos on them, I thought that if I uploaded my videos there, a lot of people would see them." He was right. Since he started uploading his videos to Pornhub last year, Changhsu has gained 1.6 million views and 5,500 subscribers. And, crucially, he has seen some users sign up for his online maths courses – which bring in more than $250,000 a year.
Property  THE HIDEAWAY Can Picassa is a 300-year-old Mallorcan finca with an olive press, an outdoor bread oven and mountain views. The main house has six bedrooms, four bathrooms and a rustic kitchen that leads out to the pool and terraces. Head to the pretty village of Pollensa, a short drive away, for beaches, a marina and a golf course. €3.49m.
Zeitgeist Americans have ruined Halloween, says Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator. Irish emigrants took All Hallows' Eve to the New World and it has returned "hideously" changed. A night for ghost stories and simple games turned into a "gore fest" of chocolate and "too big, too garish American pumpkins". Growing up in Ireland, we had the real deal. We carved turnips, not pumpkins. We collected nuts, apples and loose change from our neighbours, and ate barm brack, a yeasted fruit bread with a ring inside – the person who found it would be the first to marry. "Boo to pumpkins and all they stand for." It's time to bring back "proper" Halloween.
On the money  Andy Warhol once said: "I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts." Now a Brooklyn art collective has found a canny way to monetise that sentiment, says Taylor Dafoe in Artnet. MSCHF (pronounced "Mischief") purchased an early Warhol sketch called Fairies for $20,000, custom-built a robot to create 999 identical forgeries, then mixed the original in with the fakes. They're now selling each picture – which has a 0.001% chance of being the original – for $250. So if they sell them all, they'll make a nifty $250,000. The twist? The buyers will never find out if they've got the real thing. It's hard to know if this is "some kind of pseudo-conceptual artwork unto itself or simply an elaborate troll job". Either way, Warhol would be proud.
Tomorrow's world Scientists have developed a "smart bandage" that can tell doctors whether or not a wound has healed without having to remove it. Taking off a dressing to check on a lesion risks causing renewed damage if the injury isn't fully healed. The smart bandage, developed at the University of Bologna, solves this by wirelessly transmitting information about the amount of moisture in the wound – a sign of whether it's healed.
Quoted "It's almost as if everyone's trying to get their parties in before another lockdown, even though having lots of parties is a great way to have another lockdown." Matt Rudd in The Sunday Times That's it. You're done. Been forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it every day and get free access to up to Subscribe for a free three-month trial with full access to our app and website. Download our app from the App Store or Google Play
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October 30, 2021
Zuckerberg’s vision of the future
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